Stock-listings charts of the day

By Felix Salmon

February 3, 2011

Guan Yang sends over a couple more charts showing the total number of stocks listed on US exchanges. First there's the NYSE, Amex, and Nasdaq combined: this one goes back to 1973, and has never been lower.
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Guan Yang sends over a couple more charts showing the total number of stocks listed on US exchanges. First there’s the NYSE, Amex, and Nasdaq combined: this one goes back to 1973, and has never been lower.

And here’s the data just for the NYSE, going back all the way to 1926:

It’s pretty clear that the total number of stocks peaked with the dot-com bubble, and is now on a long-term secular downtrend. As a result, the stock market is increasingly failing to act as a proxy for the economy as a whole. Which is one more reason to stop obsessing whether or the stock market is up or down. That never mattered much, and it will matter even less in future.